By Dr. Charlie Palmgren

“The most beautiful and most profound experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead.” – Albert Einstein

Wieman as prophetic: The Predicament of Our Time/The Culture Game

Most of the material regarding Henry as a prophet will come from his book entitled Religious Inquiry (RI) published in 1968 and other unpublished material that Henry, Fitz and I were developing that same year. In today’s comments I’ll be reflecting on the massive hurricane moving toward Florida. One of our own, Bill Petrarca, and his wife Jane, live in Ft. Myers where some of the main surge is predicted to move inland.

I will begin where Henry began his writing of RI. All italics and font changes that follow are mine.

“What generates the religious problem in the special form it assumes for our time?

1. What Generates the problem?

…The magnitude of this transformation makes it comparable to the change that brought forth civilization out of the primitive tribal life which had been the form of human existence for over a million years. To indicate the significance of this present transformation, we are adopting the words of Kenneth Bolding, who calls it a ‘transition from civilization to postcivilization’ is not intended to suggest the destruction of civilization but only to indicate the magnitude and significance of the change…occurring in our lives.”

Two years after Henry’s transitas, new information emerged from the Club of Rome in 1977 that could/would modify Henry’s statement that we were not assuming the “destruction of civilization”. It came in the form of the Club’s suggestion there were “limits to growth”. I knew that many nations, ours included, felt that when it came to economics there were really no limits on the growth of profit and wealth. It was ever upward and onward because the “invisible hand” of the marketplace in capitalism was boundless.

For me the notion of unlimited growth of profit and wealth has serious religious implications as well. When you combine the profit motive with competition as your modus operant, you have a very dangerous scenario. You get a materialistic society and workforce ripe for continual consumption. Put all this in a hierarchical structure with the power at the top and you have the perfect storm for disrupting interpersonal cooperation, collaboration and creativity.

Henry continues;

“Boulding recognizes that the great transition may not be consummated. A change so radical and so swift requires adaptive changes in the basic institutions which shape the conduct of human life. If these changes are not made, civilization will destroy itself and possibly all human life along with it.”

I’m of the opinion this is exactly what we are doing.

“Boulding is chiefly concerned with required changes in the military and political institutions, and the control of population. Our study is concerned with the corresponding change required in religion.

The change from tribal life to civilization brought with it in the course of time the change from tribal religions to the religions of civilization. This great transition was much slower than the one of equal magnitude now occurring. …Hence the development of a religion fit to sustain the life of postcivilization.”

It is important to note that what is occurring now is of a different magnitude than many similar prior changes. Time is of the essence. And, for Henry, religion must also radically change.

“…If Kenneth Boulding is correct…then civilization along with all its religions, is a brief, tumultuous, and precarious transition from tribal life with its religions to postcivilization with its religion. The transition called civilization is brief in the sense that 8,000 years, more or less, is brief compared to the preceding million years of a human-like existence and the following million years of postcivilization.”

For Henry religion is about the values that inform and determine our behavior, guide our organizations, such as business, education, governance and social media. Together these form the basis of our civilization and way of life. Think about this view in relationship to how most people organize their thinking in regard to each of these social institutions. For Henry they are all related, interconnected and interdependent. Most people perceive them as separate with differing agenda and outcomes. I’m suggesting this simple distinction is destroying our way of life and participating in the destruction of the required ecosystems sustaining planetary life itself.

This simple distinction has humongous implications. It is particularly true when you attempt to mold these institutions into a single nation that is indivisible, under God, with liberty and justice for all at the personal level while attempting to form them into a more perfect union. This always reminds me of one of my favorite authors, Albert Camus. I included him in my Master’s Thesis on existentialism. Camus died in a tragic car crash in 1960. In the wreckage they found an unfinished manuscript of his latest book. In 1995 his daughter Catherine Camus, decided to publish the unedited manuscript just as it was. A key theme in that book is the story of our time. It raises the issue of human life and its core values of solitude or individuality and solidarity or community. Is it solitary and/or solidary? Solitary is subject to becoming progressively polarized, my way or the highway. Solidary is subject to becoming progressively homogenized, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all.

The question becomes are we about either/or and/or both/and? I suggest, and believe Henry would agree, creative interchange allows for both forms of thinking. Observe our nation in the 2024 election cycle. The majority of the time when you see a map of our nation on social media its divided into two of more colors. We are no longer the United States of America. We have become the divided states of America. At the moment singularity is triumphing over solidarity. We are polarizing our differences rather than creatively interchanging with them to move from common ground to higher ground. We are moving toward conflict, rather than greater good for all.  (All quotes from RI were pgs.4-6)

In the next paper, I’ll be specific on what Henry predicted could/would happen in 2024 if we failed to start choosing creative interchange as our life style from in the late 60’s and 70’s.